1 WEEK WITH POKEMON GO

As soon as I found out that it had officially been released in the UK last Thursday, I downloaded it straight away.

You’ve probably heard of the new Pokemon game taking the world by storm: Pokemon Go. If not, where’ve you been?

STARTING UP

In the build up to it’s UK launch, I kept complaining about how it wasn’t fair that Pokemon Go wasn’t out in the UK and then last Thursday, I woke up and, as if by fate (excuse the drama), I Googled it and there it was “Pokemon Go has officially been launched in the UK”. I downloaded it straight away – I’d never watched Pokemon before, I didn’t know any of them other than Pikachu and I had absolutely no idea how to play the game, but I was still so excited.

Once I’d worked it out, I saw that there were some Pokemon in my brother’s room, so off I went, but I became frustrated when I couldn’t see them on my phone and had no clue how to catch them. However, my phone buzzed and I saw that there was another one downstairs so I went down and after pressing all the buttons and tapping my phone about 5 times a second, I realised you had to tap on the actual Pokemon to be able to see it up close and to catch it, obviously. The first Pokemon I found was Squirtle, dancing on the sofa in my living room.

I’m not going to lie, I was so excited.

POKESTOPS

That day I was starting a course, so I didn’t really have much time to go and “catch them all” but I managed to get a few on the way. We went past a Pokestop (the train station) and I had no idea what a Pokestop was, never mind how to use it. The Pokestop had opened up on my phone but I hadn’t noticed a difference so kept going inside it until I had to get in the car and go. It wasn’t until I Googled it after that I found out that you had to swipe to get pokeballs and eggs and the like. The next day I was still doing the course, so found a few more on my way, but that was it, really. One of the best things about the game is that you actually have to get up and walk around to catch Pokemon, so Niantic are kinda doing us all a favour and getting us to become healthier, really.

For the next couple of days, I caught a few Pokemon here and there and managed to load up on my Pokeballs and eggs. What I like is that every now and again, even when I’m at home and the app’s open on my phone, it will vibrate and there’ll be a Pokemon around somewhere, just chilling in my house.

Pokemons can be found in the most random places:

SERVERS

A couple of days after it’s UK launch, the app kept loading, but wouldn’t actually open. I decided to delete the app, then took to Twitter and saw that the servers were down and it was jammed for everyone, so I didn’t need to delete the app at all – by deleting it, I’d just risked losing all my progress. I panicked a little, expressed my panic on Twitter, of course, and once the servers were working again, I quickly downloaded the game and was relieved to see my progress hadn’t been lost and it was still there.

Update: servers were down once again today and the game has only started working again (around 1.40 am) and people are saying that is was down for up to 5 hours. Woah. I don’t think Niantic anticipated this many people would be playing the game, really. But if the servers carry on like this, some people just might not want to play any more.

BATTLES

On Tuesday, I fought my first battle and I won. Wahoooo. I didn’t even know what I was doing, but just kept tapping my phone, trying to knock my opponent out. It seems like it worked. I was in Manchester and went to the Trafford Centre, too, so I managed to pick up a few new types of Pokemon. Seeing as it was the hottest day of the year, Central Manchester was especially busy – it was full of people and Pokemon. I picked up a good few.

And on Wednesday I fought my second battle, but, sadly, this one I lost. I don’t think I’ve mastered the art of fighting Pokemon battles just yet (I know I’ve only fought two battles so far, okay), but I’m not going to give up!

DOWNFALLS:

The game will drain your battery, it will eat up your mobile data, the servers will go down every once in a while and it looks like a lot of people have had bad experiences with the game. Apparently, dead bodies have been encountered, people aren’t looking when they cross roads anymore and the virtual world seems to be more important to some than the actual world. A few people I know have started and stopped playing the game in the last week, simply because they either don’t think the game’s safe, are worried about their mobile data being eaten up or just aren’t interested anymore.

* If you are playing, always remember to be careful, watch where you’re going, don’t play in dangerous situations, like when crossing roads and be especially careful when going to areas with lures; you don’t know who’s planted that lure, so just stay alert and if anyone’s acting suspicious, put your phone away, move away from the area and be sure to let someone know. *

Here are my Pokemon Go facts as of right now:

I’m a level 9 trainer and

have walked 9.06 km (most of which I’ve been in the car, tbh)

have hatched 2 eggs and have 9 more eggs waiting to hatch

have fought 2 battles, 1 which I’ve won and 1 which I’ve lost

am on Team Valor (and there’s no grand explanation as to why I am; I just felt like joining the Red team)

have caught a total of 116 Pokemon, but have transferred some for candies and have evolved some, so I only have a total of 57 Pokemon right now

have 31 types of Pokemon in my Pokedex

and I have absolutely no idea where Pikachu is.

And that’s my Pokemon Go experience so far. Overall, I think it’s a fun game, but I think it’s probably much more exciting for those that have grown up around Pokemon and those that are actually familiar with the types of Pokemon. In all honesty, I was really excited about downloading the game and have enjoyed playing it, but am undecided about whether I will continue to do so. I mean, it’s fun to catch Pokemon, and it’s fun to win battles, but what’s not fun is having low battery all the time, and these stories about people being harmed and now killed just makes me question the game: is it really worth it?

(Here is an article about a young, innocent boy who was killed and is supposedly the first person who’s death was ’caused’ by the game. May he rest in peace.)

Haha this is so funny to read!! I’m team red as well 😀 And who knows whre Pikachu is, like for real? I must find him still. 😦
Awesome that you won your first battle, I still have to figure the whole battling thing out, but I first wanna level up my Pokemons a bit more so I have a fair chance of actually winning haha.

Great and fun post to read! I might write about my experiences with this game as well on my blog. 🙂

I’m really glad you enjoyed it and yessss Team Red all the way! I know, it’s so frustrating not knowing where he is, I’m determined to find him! And that makes sense – you probably should level them up first. I hope you do write about y1our experience, I can’t wait to read it. Thank you for commenting Xx